Time of Reckoning
by Academ
Summary: The last survivors of the Moon are down to their last moments as the rest of the Infected orbital have trapped them in a bunker that will not last for long under their combined onslaught. Suspense, drama, and angst ensue.


**This is my first submission to this site after months of just sitting around and being too timid to actually post. I have other things in the works beyond this. Originally, I intended for this to be a one-shot, but if people like it I can see a story going on taking place after the end of Dead Space 3: Awakening. Although I do have something in the works to serve as an afterwards for Dead Space 3, just in case the 4th game never comes out.**

**Disclaimer****: Asides from being an avid fan of the Dead Space franchise, I do not own or have any kind of formal association with the franchise. That being said, let's begin.**

_Time of Reckoning_

_ They're depending on you, think! Use your head or you or all these people are going to be just like the others-dead. Killed and then twisted into something sick and sinister that walks on two legs and is anything but human. Do you want that? I didn't think so._

I think this as I pace rapidly back and forth, quickening my strides to the gradually intensifying pounding on the door. But sometimes there's no way out. Or more accurately, no viable means of escape. We had to rivet the vent on the far side of the room shut to keep the swarmers from creeping in and there was no way that any of us were going to down to the underground sewers, never again. It was worse down there than it was outside. And that really said something.

Last I checked, just about the entire former population of the Moon was amassed outside. We could hear their unending howls for our blood straight through two feet of the solid cadmium-steel alloy in the walls. Every inch of my body is screaming at me to find a way out of our impending doom, dulling the environment so that I can focus on what's in my head. Not that it did any good.

All it told me is that we had a minute, maybe two, if the Universe was feeling generous, before the monsters outside went Alamo on us. The door could only take so much abuse, and it looked to be in its last stretches.

Then it showed me all of the ways that we would die in as soon as the door gave way to the horde. None of them were any better than the other. For a moment I understood why all those people killed themselves when the outbreak started. They'd seen this after the original pulse, and it had showed them the truth. That death on their own terms was better than _this _one.

And they were probably right. But call me a blasphemer or a fucking fool, those people still died worse than any of us will. They'd done the only thing that would lower them to a level below the murderous fiends they feared. Taking the greatest gift that they'd ever been given and throwing it away as if it was nothing. Even the thoughtless creatures out there understood what a waste that was.

I could only hope the people with me in here still cared about that. They were huddled together, for the most part, in a corner, blinking each time something crashed into the door like a battering ram and none of them could seem to stop shuddering. It only took a couple of seconds for them to notice my staring and all of them turned their weary eyes towards me and immediately took in the expression on my face.

It hurt more than anything I'd ever felt in my life to watch the hope slowly drain from their eyes. To know that it was all my fault. I'd failed these people-_my _people. They were all going to die and it was all because of me.

Oh god, what have I done?

"Stop pacing you arrogant twit!" Shannon yelled at me. I came to an immediate halt and faced her. The expression on her face loosened as much as it could have in that moment as her hazel eyes leered less intensely and her pale lips assumed a more mood neutral form. The tiny button nose between her eyes flared as her anger seethed and cold rage pumped through her veins. If her red hair hadn't been so singed I would have thought she was beautiful. "You're scaring everybody, Zach."

I looked away from her to the others, "I know... But I... I'm scared too."

She took a step towards me then laid a hand on my shoulder. The gesture confused me at first, she'd been doing what she could to undermine my leadership since the infection had started and our ragtag group was formed. If we had followed her directions instead of mine, then maybe, just maybe we would have made it off this doomed rock with our lives.

I found my hand reaching up to take hold of hers. It assumed a gentle grip that tightened as I allowed myself to feel once more. Her eyes widened at the sudden contact before she squeezed back just as hard. "It's okay Zach. You tried your best and did what you could with all you had. There's not a single person in this room who could have done a better job than you did. Not even myself." I looked to all of them and they all nodded at me. Even Evan, who was only ten, joined them.

Then Shannon smiled, "But you're absolutely positive you don't have any more crazy ideas?"

I laughed as a single tear escaped my eye and ran down my cheek, "No, 'fraid I'm fresh out."

"Okay, good," she sighed. "I was getting a little tired of fighting anyways."

"Me too..." She was right. It felt good to just let it all go. But I couldn't help finding the moment still wanting. As her hand began to slink away from mine, I knew what was missing. I didn't let her hand go. "Wait."

She didn't appear to be as dismayed as I would have imagined when I stopped her from withdrawing, but she still managed to sound aggravated when she asked, "What is it Zach?"

I sighed, "This is stupid. But uh, all of this... I don't know. I-it's got me thinking back to before all this happened. Back before I walked out on my family and joined the Merchant Marines."

"Oh? What about then? Come on, out with it." she crudely impelled.

There was a second in which I couldn't stand looking her in the eye, but it passed. "It was so many years ago after some huge fight that I can hardly remember anymore. I haven't seen, talked, or heard from my parents or my sister since then, but I've never stopped thinking of them ever since I jumped onto that troop shuttle. And with all this, I-I just can't shake this feeling that they'll never know what happened to me. That they're just sitting around the old family table and waiting for a call from me that will never come."

"Za-"

"I wasn't finished," I stated as levelly as I could manage even with a second tear running down the other side of my face. "And..." I took a moment to compose myself, drawing in a deep breath to hold what little strength I could gather together before continuing, "...And I know that they're probably dead too. Because chances are, if it's happening _here_ on the Moon, then it's happening down there on Earth too. I keep telling myself that they lived-live-in a good city. Not much crime, above average law enforcement for our day and age. They could still be safe and sound. Maybe the infection was stopped down there.

"Then I think about what good that did _us_ and I know deep down somewhere that they're all dead and I'm..."

Shannon pursed her lips and looked down at the floor, "You're what, Zach?"

"I'm still just what I've always been," I muttered.

"And what is that?" she choked out.

"Alone."

The word comes from a dark, cold place inside of me.

A deafening silence that blotted out all of the yearning for human flesh from all the loose skinned freaks outside followed, until all of a sudden, pearls of understanding sympathy began to cascade down her face as she cleared the rest of the distance and embraced me, burying her head into my shoulder. "Zach, don't you see you have us? And that we have you? You looked after us better than any leader could for their group. You protected us in a way reserved for family, shielding us with your own life, making sacrifices and all the hard choices so that we wouldn't have to. You earned our respect and... and our love. So don't you go and die thinking that way, because _you _are not alone. _None_ of us are alone. Because..."

"...We all have each other," I finished for her as I lost control of my eyes and the Tigris and Euphrates began to flood down both sides of my face. "I understand now," I told her. "It's just like that one thing my Grandfather used to tell me. One of those old Credos of the Forgotten Religion. It went like this:

_"'As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..._"

Metal screeched as a hole in the bulkhead was made and their unending sound flooded into the room. Evan's mother covered his ears and the others picked up their rifles and started to fire through the hole. I didn't do anything but wrap an arm protectively around the back of Shannon's head so that I could keep her from seeing them break in. She didn't make any effort to fight me.

_"'I fear no evil..."_

Wayne chucked a grenade through the hole and tore several of them apart, but widened the birth of it in the process. The relentless monsters outside recollected themselves and charged once more with even greater steam. Even though I could barely hear with all of the ringing in my ear, I concluded my last words.

"'_For thou art with me!'"_

Then I shut my eyes and waited for them to come.

There was some screaming and then the sound of liquid being splashed everywhere, but still I found myself waiting.

A long second passes and there is nothing to be heard but the panting breaths of the girl still in my arms. "What's the matter you sons of bitches!? We not good enough... for you?" I opened my eyes as I spoke and saw the results of what resembled more carnage than I'd seen in the past twelve hours. There was this organic pink gook everywhere with chippings of bone meal mixed throughout it like it was some sadistic soup. Only I was standing knee deep in it, we all were. "Shannon? Shannon you've got to see this," I said as I unwrapped my arms from the back of her head and slender body.

She inched her head slowly out of my shoulder and then cracked open one eye, then sprung the other wide open. "How the- What the Hell happened?"

"They're all... dead. _He _did it," I said, and then let out a cackle that turned into adrenaline laced laughter. The others joined in the celebrations with cheers and curses and screams that echoed through the drenched ruins of the city. Shannon remained dumbstruck with the most quizzical look on her face.

"What makes you think a man did all this you sexist pig? This could have easily been the work of a woman, or any number of people for that matter," She inquired with the same gusto that fit her much more than the damsel attitude she'd adopted when she thought she was going to die. I grinned knowingly back at her.

"You remember around when it all started and they weren't even concerned with the infection as much as those Unitologist extremists? Back when those fanatics hacked the broadband to send a signal to all their armed zealots? They were all searching for one man in particular. But they never found him because he made it off this god forsaken place. And he must've done the one thing they'd wanted to stop him from doing... He cut the infection off at its source."

"And who was this man?"

I looked up at the sky blotted out by the smoke from all of the fires and found hope there once more, even with our Home ablaze in the distance. And then I told her:

"Isaac Clarke."

**A/N: And so ends that.**

**This was a lot of fun for me to write. The Moon (the Earth's) was the first occasion in which Isaac was on a highly populated area that wasn't a space station, but a seemingly terraformed Moon. The possibilities for devastation are endless in such a place where a population of millions, not thousands it what the survivors have to contend with. **

**-Academ**


End file.
